Here is a list of current college football coaching tenures, organized by date of hiring. Paul Rhoads has been around four years, placing him in a tie for 38th, five places below Bill Snyder 2.0.
Iowa State’s schedule includes four coaches in the top nine: Mack Brown (Texas), Bob Stoops (Oklahoma), Kirk Ferentz (Iowa, a day after Stoops), and Gary Patterson (TCU). Gary Pinkel (Missouri) is a spot above Patterson. No coach hired in 2001 or 2002 is still with the same team.
Shiloh, Tennessee, Dec. 29 — It was the bloodiest day of the Civil War until surpassed by Antietam, and a bunch of farm boys from Iowa were caught right in the middle of it.
The Iowa monument at Shiloh is the largest at the site. It is right by the visitors center.
This battle map shows the individual divisions on the first day. The 2nd, 7th, 12th, 14th, and 8th Iowa were all positioned along the Sunken Road. As some Union forces retreated to build a defensive perimeter, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant sent out a message: Hold the line at all costs.
The “Wolf Creek Rangers” of Tama County were in the 14th Iowa, Company G. They were among those captured by the Confederates the evening of the first day. (More images after the jump.) (To read the text, you may have to open the image in a new tab.) Continue reading
One of SB Nation’s college football writers ranked the year’s games with this stretch in the middle:
52. Michigan State 16, Wisconsin 13 (OT) (October 27).
51. Ohio State 21, Wisconsin 14 (OT) (November 17).
50. Penn State 24, Wisconsin 21 (OT) (November 24). Wisconsin: the best 8-6 team of all-time. I am confident in saying that. The Badgers were close to much, much more.
In 2005, Iowa State went 7-5 with the following:
Nebraska 27, Iowa State 20 (2OT) (October 1).
Missouri 27, Iowa State 24 (OT) (October 15).
Kansas 24, Iowa State 21 (OT) (November 26).
If ISU had won any of those three, the Cyclones, instead of Colorado, would have had the chance to be steamrolled 70-3 by Texas in the Big 12 Championship. That probably means they wouldn’t have been called the best 8-5 team ever, though.
The 1971 ISU team, which only lost to 1-2-3 poll finishers Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Colorado in the regular season and then lost to LSU in the Sun Bowl, arguably holds the “best” distinction among 8-4 teams. (CU was #5 at the time of the game.)
No particular theme here, just some random pieces. All links are to PDF maps and district descriptions are approximations.
North Tama 101, CAL (Latimer) 21. The NT boys’ coach used the entire bench. CAL only had eight players on both the boys’ and girls’ teams.
The North Tama boys have never reached the century mark. The 1996-97 substate team beat Don Bosco 95-41 in the last game of the regular season.
(Apologies for the quality, but none of us brought a camera!)
SEE? See what ESPN deprived its basic-cable audience of? Or alternately, see what ESPN saved thousands of Cyclone fans from watching?
You know the age old question of “Is it better to lose in overtime or a blowout?” Good news! With Iowa State, you don’t have to decide!
Cyclone Fanatic’s Brent Blum puts this Kansas game in ISU’s pantheon of pain and hits the nail on the head for what it means to be a Cyclone fan.
UPDATE: Big debate about fouling when up three. Usually the team that’s up isn’t being yelled at to foul. And can you blame the team for not when this is what happens?
Kaskaskia, Illinois, Dec. 29 — There’s not much left in the first capital of Illinois. In the 2000s, it was the smallest city in the state. Although now in second place, it remains the only city in Illinois west of the Mississippi River. You see it in that little bulge of Randolph County on the state outline, south of St. Louis. A easy way to clinch the county is to do precisely what we did, get there from I-55. (This was the only positive of stopping early the previous night.)
The Chicago Tribune has more background on the former city. The capital’s move from Kaskaskia to Vandalia is one of the few times a center of government moved east as territories and states grew. Kaskaskia’s geographical oddness also got it featured on “How the States Got Their Shapes.”
There are three brick buildings left in town: the church, a building that looks like it used to be a school, and the Kaskaskia Bell State Memorial. It’s not much but the bell has an important connection to the Revolutionary War.
If you press a couple buttons, the door opens (but a gate still bars entry) and an audio recording about the bell plays. Here’s a video of someone’s summertime visit (but you can’t really hear the audio).
More trip posts next week.
Tonight the Iowa State men play #6 Kansas. The game is on ESPNU.
Tonight the #25 Iowa State women play #1 Baylor. The game is on Fox College Sports Central.
Both teams are playing top-10 conference opponents and the games are not available on basic cable. The games could be exciting or they could be blowouts, but far fewer people will be able to see them than might have a year or two ago on ESPN/2 or Fox Sports. In fact, with a bunch of men’s games on ESPNU this year, there may be fewer viewers in Iowa than when the games were on WOI.
Noted for posterity.
The burns and strains of recovery were just too much.
Please keep his family — my relatives — in your thoughts and prayers.
UPDATE: The Marshalltown Times-Republican has a short obituary. The Cedar Rapids Gazette has a brief and a picture.
